The present invention relates to a master management system, a master management method, and a master management program, and more specifically to a technique of concurrently establishing both securing of an application use environment desired by a user and effective management of an application deploying master in a thin client system.
Due to the need for information leakage measures and internal control in a company, etc., a concept of “thin client” has appeared, according to which: a dedicated computer (a thin client) omitting therefrom a hard disk apparatus, etc., and having therein only the essential functions such as displaying and inputting is employed for a client computer; and resources such as application software are collectively managed by a server (a blade server).
A proposed technique concerning such a thin client system is, for example, a method of automatically allocating computing resources of a rack blade computer assembly with the object of automatically allocating the computing resources of the rack blade computer assembly, and this method includes the steps of: receiving server performance information from an application server pool disposed on a rack of the rack blade computer assembly; establishing at least one QoS attribute to the application server pool; establishing that the QoS attribute is lower than a standard; and allocating a blade server from a free server pool to be used by the application server pool (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2004-110791).
In a center that provides a virtual desktop computer to a thin client (a party that manages a blade server, etc.), an application needed by a user of the thin client for his/her duties has been grasped and managed based on a register managed offline, a request issued when necessary from the user, etc., and the environment has been set such that the application are usable on the virtual desktop computer. When another type of hardware (such as a blade server with a different specification) was present being mixed in a thin client system: a master that has set therein applications necessary for duties for each type of hardware (for example, an image file of the computer installed with an OS and the applications) has been managed and, based on this master, deployment of the applications is executed on a blade server for the user.
However, because necessary applications and hardware performances often differ for each user and each duty, the number of masters necessary becomes equal to the number of users when all of applications desired by the users are to be provided in a virtual desktop environment to satisfy the demands of all the users. When such master management is executed in a large-scale system that holds a huge number of users, increases of the cost and the labor for the management and an increase of the disk space for storing masters are serious problems.
On the other hand, if multiple users are made to use the same fixed masters for each duty, each hardware, and each position in order to reduce the number of masters, some of the users may be provided with only some of the applications that the user desires to use in the virtual desktop environment and, therefore, it is worried that an obstacle to execution of duties may be generated. In addition, a waste in costs tends to be generated such as the case where licenses of applications that a user group does not need to use must be even prepared and hardware of the specification necessary for using the applications must also be introduced.
In the above conventional technique, when a failure has occurred to a blade server and a substituting environment is provided to a user, for example, deployment of an application is executed according to a fixed master corresponding to a duty group, etc., to which the user belongs. In this case, the application that the user needs may not be provided in the substituting environment and, therefore, the restrictions and dissatisfaction arise to the user in executing his/her duties.